Another shot at EchoPark win comes up short for Hocevar

The opening was there for Carson Hocevar on the final overtime attempt at EchoPark Speedway, it just wasn’t enough for him to be the only driver to take advantage of it.

Hocevar finished fourth Sunday night. He made the pass on leader Bubba Wallace on the final lap of the overtime attempt, but so too did Tyler Reddick. And it was Reddick and his Toyota pusher, Chase Briscoe, who then left Hocevar in the rearview mirror.

“I thought we did a really good job,” Hocevar told RACER and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “The (No.) 1 stayed connected and we got really rolling there. The (No.) 23 was trying to block, and I was going to do whatever I could to make sure he wasn’t in front of me, and I was shocked he kind of overdid it and left the middle open, which was perfect. But perfect for the (No.) 45 basically because the (No.) 1 got trapped and stuck, and it was difficult.

“I had no helpers. I had the (No.) 19 coming, and he wasn’t going to push me. So, super happy, though, to basically be leading or in contention at the white flag again. Just didn’t come around victorious.”

The pass on Wallace came down the backstretch. Wallace went from the bottom to the top to block the outside lane, which Hocevar was leading. But he ended up going too wide, which gave Hocevar momentum to make the move to the left and drive underneath and away from him.

With Wallace shuffled out of contention, it became a side-by-side battle of Reddick and Hocevar ahead of a side-by-side battle of Briscoe and Chastain. Off Turn 4, however, Chastain briefly faded, and that allowed Briscoe to get behind Reddick for the winning shove past Hocevar after taking the white flag.

Hocevar was then left in no man’s land as Chastain took a run to his inside to get to third place. After falling to fifth place in Turns 1 and 2, Hocevar gained one position, on Shane van Gisbergen, by the checkered flag.

It was the second consecutive race at EchoPark in which Hoevar was in contention for the victory in the final laps.

“You don’t need anybody; you kind of push by yourself until about the last lap and then you need somebody,” Hocevar said. “So, I’m trying to figure that part out yet, but I just really like it (here). You just take a lot of runs, and it’s been a lot of fun. This Spectrum car has been very fast, so it makes it a little easier for me.”

The top-five finish was a rebound for Hocevar after he went two laps down in the first stage. The Spire Motorsports driver was forced to pit by himself under green-flag conditions on lap 32 due to a right-front tire issue. The team also had to address the right-side window, which Hocevar reported had blown out as the stage was winding down.

Fortunately, he made it to the stage break at lap 60 without further incident and got the first of two laps back. The second lap was made up when the caution flew on lap 82.

“I made a pretty aggressive move and clipped (Kyle Larson), just very tight, and cut the right-front tire, and then eventually pounded the wall and knocked the window out of it with damage,” Hocevar said. “So, yeah, pretty self-inflicted there. I really had time under caution to think about it and think about how that maybe happened. But my guys did really good. A little disappointed that I gave up stage points in stage one, but I thought we rebounded nicely.”

But even when he was behind the eight-ball, Hocevar never doubted the outcome.

“Well, I felt like we were going to win,” Hocevar said. “Single digits, I thought were going to be really important though; it’s really hard to win obviously and a single-digit day was going to be really important, and I think we achieved that.”

Hocevar is fourth in points after the first two races.